How to maintain multipart meshes
Instead of Joining the mesh objects into one, you can keep them separate if you wish.   Here I show two spheres that were then bound to an armature (armature modifier).  They respond to the appropriate nearby bones in pose mode.  This is how I might control both a character and possible control cloths (instead of with cloth modifier, although you can get &quot;character bleeds through clothing&quot; effects).  Several child objects could be parented to a master parent, but you'd have to experiment with side effects.